Funny thing about working with digital media compared to tactile media (is that the name for it?) is the ability for it to be irretrievably lost to the binary gods as opposed to simply plucking it from the waste paper basket, smoothing out the crumples, and recopying the important bits with a physical reference right at your side. The delete option only goes so far as to send it into oblivion. It is like scratching it out, drawing a single line through a bit of text, or smudging the pencil lines around with a rubber eraser. There is enough of a remnant still there to bring it back whole or in part with the undo function. Even sending it to the trash is completely salvageable unless you are an anal recycler like myself. It is soooo easy, though. Too easy. Even easier once you learn all the quick keys instead of dragging and dropping like the predigitites.

A laptop is like a portable desk hence, the name “desktop.” File folders are like the drawers with little subfolders inside of each. A computer is a well oiled machine in the department of organization. So, I was cleaning out my drawers the other day. they had become cluttered as they tend to do. I was going to clear the surfaces and give the silver mahogany surface of my Mac Powerbook a good shine. Somewhere along the way I would have probably found a new placemat backdrop for the screen from my photo albums. With 30 gig worth of photoshops and vacations and walking around town with my Christmas special Olympus Toughshots and whatnot from the last two or three years, I figured they were the first drawer to start the weeding out process. My music drawer was done at the end of spring after a hundred gig trade with a buddy down the street. My documents are regular enough given the tiny size needed for storing predominately text based items. The website content was not really anything I wished to tackle at that particular moment. The iPhoto library it was to be.

First, I scanned the contents and felt assured that a portion of those files were already stored in the closet. After plugging in my photo/music closet (external hard drive) I briefly looked at the shelves of years past, taking mental note what was and was not included among them. Remembering a mishap that always occurs during severe cleaning, all of my photos were duplicated and triplicated from the initial transfer to the external because of that rascally “import to iPhoto” command. Of course I hit “import the whole damn friggin library” and it took it as literal as computers will, importing everything from “originals” to “modified” to the thumbnail data. I was not about to do that all over again. I learned how to control+select and “open package contents” and pick and choose what should stay and what should go. Then it is all a matter of option+deleting from the iPhoto window.

In my finder window under the Pictures drawer I had a series of years from 2000-2007 above the iPhoto Library icon. They were of Disneyland, The Alice in Wonderland Frye’s in CA, the trip Zombie Spiderman took to Universal Studios, all stuff I had brought copies out of the closet and worked on previously, but never removed. One by one I previewed and compared to those stored in the closet. All there. All accounted for. All the same version. Option+Delete. Option+Delete. Straight to the trash. Well, I option+deleted one too many times. I might have even used the select then shift+select to grab a whole bunch to option+delete in one big go. Whatever it was I did not notice until holding the select button over the trashcan in my dock until the command window popped up and telling it to empty, which is the same as recycling to all of you PC users.

The little box that tells you what’s going on started configuring. It said 124, then 256, then 592, which is about where I thought it should have stopped but it didn’t. It doubled. I figured these were the thumbnails. It tripled. The modified versions. When it hit 10, 000 I started to get really worried. It was too late.

After realizing my mistake I did what any 21st century man would do. I shouted a string of obscenities, threw around no-tech objects that could take a good pummeling, beat my sticks and clubs against the cave wall, slept on it, played a violent video game, then posted my woes on Facebook and Twitter. The responses for recovery programs flooded in from friends and spammers. I decided to check a few of them out. Maybe there was a chance. Not having another computer hooked online nor a hundred bucks to spend after the free trial, this process for free software ate away at the memory used to store these recycled documents in digital limbo. When I found what I was looking for it took two or three trial runs with it to come up with more useless crap to further disintegrate the photos into uselessness.

Finally, I was on my way. It took a day and a half for the program to sift through my garbage and find every .jpg and .psd still available among the coffee grinds and tomatoe sauce. Yes, I think someone made spaghetti, ate only a bite, and threw the rest away on top of my Hawaii trip. The most successful recoveries were from Moab, which Blake 182 had all of on his Borg Drive, and the two years I spent in Massachusetts from 2005 – 2007, all of which were already saved in their current form in the closet.

I wiped away the noodles from everything else for the next two days, which in the digital sense means getting rid of every website image visited, countless profile pictures stored for easy reference, and trace particle from a disc your buddy might have burned for you that you downloaded. It also means being satisfied with 300×500 pixilation. Only the iPhone camera gave me 1,000. Again though, all of those were already stored on an alternate device. Calling Robert was no help. He had lost the camera containing our adventures. I said my goodbyes to the bulk of Guadalupe, to Galveston, to Engineer mountain, to Boulder Creek Festival, to Zombie Jesus Day, to Christmas in Durango, to Copper Mountain were the South and the East collided, to Glass Beach on Kauai, and whatever else I committed to photographic memory and so consequently forgot. I would name them, but they are already gone like a dream from one wakes and has already had their coffee.

I talked about bringing a book to the bar. That was okay. Enjoyable, even. Non threatening. Antisocial? Yes. But not over the top. Now, I am sitting in Bayfield’s Steamworks Brewery with a computer. Too much? Yes. Why? Because there are no coffee shops open after 2pm on a Saturday and this is where I came instead of Durango. A couple friends are driving up from Houston with my canoe. I came into town early to meet up with them and bring them the rest of the way home. What was I supposed to do while waiting? Well, I figured, I will just bring my computer to finish tapping out the 3rd part to the Daudi Travels series. They have a really nice place in town called the Mill Street Brew, coffee brew not beer. They serve beer also, but it is safe for the electronics because they serve a nice hot cup of java too. Not today, though. They close early on the weekends. They close early every night except Thursday and Tuesday.

The good news is that it is pouring down rain. That will fill up the rivers.